an aBUNdance of sourdough starter
A depiction of Tai Jacob’s seor and kitchen as warm, sourdough bread smells fill the air. Illustration: Cherileigh Co
*Seor: Hebrew word for yeast.
Toasty, warm sourdough bread fills the air of Tai Jacob’s charming Toronto kitchen. The recent McGill University MA graduate, is perfecting the wonders of breadmaking in their free time. Their 100-year-old wild sourdough starter sits happily on the kitchen island in a roomy one-quart glass mason jar.
Starting in September 2019, Jacob has raised their 100-year-old seor* like a pet. “If my room was warmer, I would sleep next to it,” says Jacob. The night before they decide to make bread, they feed it equal parts rye flour and filtered water. Every time the starter eats, it flourishes three times its size.
Utilizing the O.G. yeast is highly cost-effective. The $5 “active” dry yeast available at grocery stores is not as fully alive as Jacob’s sourdough starter. Store bought yeast is a one night stand whereas wild yeast starter is a long-term relationship.
“Our relationship is new. You know when you meet someone, and it’s meant to be? That’s like me and my starter,” says Jacob.
It eats the sugar from gluten and releases carbon dioxide. Over a few hours, plain ingredients react causing bubbles to start oozing within the jar.
“Sourdough bread requires a lot of moisture. You know when you cut open a slice of sourdough and it has all those holes in it, that is the result of fermentation.”
After using the starter once, there are leftovers that need to be fed and stored in the fridge when not in use. Other than the classic loaf, there are a plethora of recipes one can bake with a sourdough starter; waffles, pies, cookies, cakes, crackers and scones.
“Now when I bake anything, I’m like, ‘Can I use my sourdough starter?’” Jacob laughs. “I have a deeper relationship with the food that I eat, because I’ve built this culture and this friend of mine, the starter.”
When they are low on groceries and don't want to venture out, they find innovative but simple ways to use their sourdough starter. “All I need to do is fry it in olive oil, cut up some chives, and throw in some za’atar and I have a sourdough pancake that’s delicious and super filling.”
Baking a loaf is an eight-hour process because the dough needs to be folded every two hours, but Jacob says the task is flexible around any work schedule. “If you work nine to five, you can manipulate the way your dough is fermenting and the time you wait in between folds by changing the temperature of the dough. So, you can put it in the fridge for like eight hours instead of waiting two hours at room temperature.”
Jacob received one tablespoon (astoundingly, that’s all you need to start a seor) from their friend in Montreal, Nadia Chaney. Jacob attends Chaney’s “The Time Zone Research Lab,” a workshop that she’s running from her living room for one hundred Wednesdays in-person and on the Internet. Although Jacob is unable to go to Montreal, they can still participate.
“We’ve talked about different calendars, the physics of time. It’s a come and go thing. At sunrise, she’ll wake up, prepare a dough, stretch and meditate, do a reading with everyone that comes and develop an activity. Throughout this whole time, she’s preparing this dough to be baked for dinner after sunset.”
As a result, the dough is absorbing all this knowledge. “In a way, I’m still a part of this process even if I make bread on Sunday. What is time anyways? The whole point of the lab is to question it. I’m still connected through this culture, the sourdough culture,” Jacob says.
Jacob has thrived into a small yet bountiful North American sourdough starter network by gifting tablespoons to 10 people: nine Torontonians and one New Yorker. “We’ve actually built a resilient network in the city where there’s going to be more than enough starter for everyone, which is a wonderful framework of abundance.”
Interestingly enough, the seor is the sensei because it has multiplied and given accessible opportunity to a fresh community of bakers. “I’m in an email chain where they’ll be like, ‘I made bread this week, and this is what it looked like, this is what I tried differently, this is what I fed the starter,’” says Jacob. “We can also learn from each other working with the starter.”
When raising a sourdough culture, one learns formidable lessons on community resilience, time and food security. “Just thinking about how the starter grows, in just a day, how much are we growing every day by taking in things around us or allowing us to feed or be fed or be nourished or to give and receive. How much could you grow if you let yourself?”
As a Jewish millennial, feeding the seor as a ritual connects Jacob to their roots. “It structures your day just like prayer. In Judaism, you have a morning and an evening prayer. You can think about feeding the starter as a prayer because you feed it in the morning and evening. I have learned from my interactions with [the] queer Jewish community is there are multiple ways to pray.”
The breadth of Jacob’s sourdough starter stems deeper. It has lived many lives and constantly regenerates to provide an abundance of nourishment. “It’s this community learning how to work with the starter and there’s the individual relationship, like a cross-species relationship.”
Fermenting a sourdough starter is the conscious decision to preserve a tradition from around 300 B.C. Ancient Egypt. In today’s social climate, it can foster generations of breadwinners.
sourdough bread recipe by tai jacob
BAKING BREAD ESSENTIALS
Dough scraper
Dutch oven
Rubber spatula
Bread knife
Kitchen scale
One-quart glass jar
Water mister
INGREDIENTS
100 grams active sourdough starter
450 grams flour
345 grams water
8 grams salt
Yields one loaf.
Dissolve the starter into the water.
Fold in the flour and salt.
Cover dough with a damp tea towel, let it sit for 30 minutes.
Do your first fold: spray a large surface and your hands with water, place your dough on the surface. Gently stretch and fold the dough 10-12 times. Listen to the dough with your hands, place prayers and intentions into your loaf with each touch. Place back in your mixing bowl and cover with a damp cloth for two hours.
Do your second fold: once again spray your surfaces and hands with water, and fold the dough around six times. Folding the dough helps build structure. Place back in your mixing bowl and cover with a damp cloth for two hours.
Do your third fold: repeat step 5.
Shape your dough: sprinkle a large surface with flour. Place your dough on the surface. Fold the left side in, fold the right side in. Fold and tuck the top of the dough in and gently roll the dough into a round shape. Place your dough in a large bowl that you have sprinkled with flour. Give the dough a sweet pat or kiss and place it in the fridge overnight.
In the morning, preheat your conventional oven to 425°F, place a dutch oven in the oven without the lid. Take your dough out of the fridge and place it on a baking sheet.
After approximately 20 minutes, place the dough on the baking sheet into the heated dutch oven, and cover with the lid.
Bake for 25 minutes with the lid.
Bake for 22 minutes without the lid.
Turn off the oven, leave the loaf in there with the oven door slightly ajar. This process helps your bread’s crust to cure, make it extra crispy and crunchy.
Take your loaf out, and cool for 1-2 hours before cutting open.
Notes: Those interested in obtaining their own starter, ask your local bakery for one tablespoon or use online resources to DIY. Store starter in a clean one-quart glass jar, and feed starter equal parts water and flour twice a day.
A day before using your starter, take it out of the fridge and feed it every 8 hours until active. A cold, unused, sleepy starter may need three or four feedings to wake up.